


i hear the rocks and stones echoing our song (i'm coming)

by flightofwonder



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Buried Alive, Earthquakes, Gen, Hurt Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sensory Deprivation, Temporary Character Death, Trapped in a mine, suffocation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:48:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27218176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flightofwonder/pseuds/flightofwonder
Summary: Joe opened his eyes, and dread sunk in his stomach. It was pitch black. And he was miles underground in a system that was already on the brink of collapse before they’d gotten there to help.And he was alone.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Nile Freeman & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani
Comments: 48
Kudos: 349
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	i hear the rocks and stones echoing our song (i'm coming)

**Author's Note:**

> WHUMPTOBER AINT OVER YET BABY
> 
> Buried Alive, Rescue, Found Family, Isolation, Hallucinations, Carry, Sleep Deprivation, Sensory Deprivation, Earthquake, Accidents
> 
> Let's finish STRONG. (And thanks for reading, as always!)

“Look at me.”

Nile forced her eyes to open, her heart pounding intensely in her head and making it hard for her eyes to focus. She could make out an outline against a searchlight; she recognized the stupid baseball cap. He couldn’t have been more than a few feet away from him.

But between them was a gaping abyss: a shaft that led nowhere but straight under the earth.

“I can’t make it,” Nile yelled above the din.

“Yes, you can,” Joe insisted, standing delicately on the edge of a ledge.

“And if I don’t?”

Nile would fall, and she would die. Worse: she would die, and she would live, trapped hundreds of miles under the earth, where nobody would find her. She would end up just like—

“Then we’ll find you,” said Joe, sounding so sure in the face of what he’d already failed once before, and that just makes Nile’s throat tighter.

“But—"

“We’ll find you,” Joe vowed, reaching out his hand, “But you won’t fall, because you’re going to jump.”

Nile made a noise halfway between a laugh and a scream.

And she jumped.

* * *

**Fourteen Months Later**

_“Can you walk?”_

Joe helped the miner to his unsteady feet, wrapping an arm around his shoulder. There wasn’t much space in here to stand up straight, but the sooner he got out of here, the sooner they could give him medical attention.

 _“You with me, my friend?”_ Joe cajoled in the local language, knowing it probably sounded too formal for this rural setting, but he needed to keep this man awake. The man blinked at him, and Joe figured that was as good an answer as he was going to get.

He lugged him to his feet as best he could, walking towards the man-made doorway that indicated the crossroads to the longer tunnel. They were in the deepest part of the mine, and this man was the last to be rescued. It was a sensitive operation: the area was still at a huge risk of a landslide. Andy and the team were just in the right place and the right time. They’d heard about the accident on the local news and volunteered their assistance with fake credentials and sincere gusto. (Except Nile, but all of them had a few centuries to shake off their phobias, and they would show her the same courtesy.)

The only light down here came from Joe’s headlamp – the power underground had gone out days ago with the first slide. And this section wasn’t supposed to be its own work tunnel, but a reservoir for geological testing, with no more than a person or two at a time inside. It wasn’t badly built, considering the lack of government funding, but the latest earthquake combined with the landslide made the entire foundation susceptible to collapse.

Joe tried his very best to not think about that, chatting amiably to the unresponsive man he was practically dragging with him at this point.

Then, there was a crack.

The sound of shifting earth. Just a few stones at first. Then, a loud rumble.

 _Shit_.

The stones and dirt started to fall all around them, at all angles, but the man-made doorway was still standing a foot or two ahead. The injured man could make it – but only if Joe practically threw him to it.

He moved on pure instinct, heaving the man’s body forward, and as soon as he felt him leave his hands, the larger rocks began to tumble, blocking off his exit. He moved back into the smaller tunnel, wincing as sharp stones crushed his fingers, his knee, his ribcage – but he kept crawling backwards. The back of the alcove was slightly more reinforced, and if he made it—

Something hard hit his forehead, jackhammering his head back into more stone and taking out his one source of light with an ominous crunch, but he could stillmove, so that was what he did. He scrambled backwards, now completely lost in darkness, until his back hit reinforced stone. He couldn’t go any farther.

He closed his eyes and covered his head with his hands, bracing for an unseemly death. But as the dust settled around him, it seemed as if he was spared. From being crushed, at least. He must have made it to the rear of the tunnel.

Joe opened his eyes, and dread sunk in his stomach. It was pitch black. And he was miles underground in a system that was already on the brink of collapse _before_ they’d gotten there to help.

And he was alone.

* * *

His job became both staggeringly simple and utterly impossible: all he had to do was stay sane. Not even stay alive. Trapped in the deepest part of a mine that was lacking support even before he entered it, rationally, Joe knew it would be days, maybe weeks before the team could reach him. _(If they ever did.)_

The alcove didn’t give him room to stand, or even stretch out his legs, but at least he wasn’t crushed under rubble, dying over and over again from the weight of the stones on his chest. _(Instead, he’d suffocate. Probably starve a few times in between—)_

(He really had to put a plug in that part of his head, if he wanted to get out of this and still be himself.)

And so, his long vigil began.

Joe was good at making something out of nothing. He had found patterns in rotted wood and the bolts of cells, composed music from the drops of water in cellars. He enjoyed pleasantly talking to whoever was stupid enough to guard him, annoying the crap out of them until they slipped up and made a fatal mistake. It wasn’t ideal if members of the team were also captured, but they got in on the fun, in their own way, and their presence was always more reassuring than anything else.

But here – Joe had nothing. He closed his eyes, opened them again, and saw the exact same thing: darkness. The lack of rocks shifting meant his shelter held steady, but it also meant that the dirt kept a thing from reaching his ears. Joe could talk to himself – he was quite skilled at it – but that would sacrifice oxygen, and he couldn’t be flippant with it.

_(Nicky had wondered if their last death was a matter of timing or the number of deaths. They had subsequently spiraled for two months trying to figure out each other's numbers. Once they failed, they never tried again. If Nicky asked him how many times he had died down here, would he be able to say?)_

There was no light. And there was no time. Just the sound of his heartbeat in his ears, getting weaker as he moved on through a vast eternity with no markers.

So, he had to look outside himself. He tried his best to imagine his family out there, where time was still moving forward. Andy, though mortal, was determined and loyal, and she would kick and scream and kill anyone in her way before she gave up another soldier. She was relentless— and suddenly, there were nauseating memories of decades at sea, potential leads slipping through their fingers like sea foam, over and _over—_

Right, no, relentless, Andy was relentless. And Nile was young and spirited and determined, and he knew she would be doing everything she could to help the team get to him. Her terror of small spaces felt more warranted than ever; he’d never blame her for being too paralyzed with fear to come down here. She was resourceful, besides. She’d find other ways to help.

Nicky— God, Nicky. He’d never stop. He’d breathe his last still digging for Joe in the earth, thousands of years from now if that was what it took. He knew, because if their positions were reversed, Joe would never stop, either.

He hoped the girls made him eat.

Suddenly, Joe doubled over at the reminder and decided that wasn’t the best train of thought to follow.

Joe breathed in the dusty air and tried to re-center himself, running out of simulations of the future to keep him going. It was harder to breathe in general, now.

The darkness raged against his eyelids, and sleep eluded him. The darkness was too black, the silence too quiet, and he already felt an urge to scream start in the pit of his throat at the idea of this being his eternal abyss. Especially when death started to come.

He wondered if counting his breaths between deaths would help. Problem was, he found out, it got harder to tell exactly when he died, and even harder when exactly he revived. And as he lost more and more oxygen, his chest heaving up and down became less of a comfort and more of an impending countdown. It put a damper on the whole game, really.

Instead, with the last of his will and concentration, he conjured his family, like spirits.

He would know Nicky blind, so recreating him against the darkness wasn’t difficult. Once Joe made him in his mind’s eye, they talked and talked, retracing ancient memories. He could make out his small smile against the nothingness, could reach out and touch the slant of his nose and the curve of his neck if he really tried—

Death came to him mid-conversation, and Joe decided to stop trying to touch him and find solace in just the memory of his voice, the reconstruction of his face.

( _It wasn’t enough, he’d die down here before he could touch Nicky again—_ )

Andy, he could recreate her, too. He could hear the giggles he sometimes managed to get out of her, see the glint of fondness in her steel eyes, the endless reserve of affection she had for them, for _him_. Joe listened as she told him stories like she used to over campfires when they first met, back when Joe put his faith in the oldest being in the universe, and he still did.

( _He knew all these stories already, there was no campfire and there was no Andy, just his own isolated mind chattering to itself_ —)

He didn’t want to look at Booker, didn’t want to extend the energy that dealing with the implication of him took, but he allowed a few treasured memories to wash over him and numb the hurt.

And Nile… she had a few stories for him, but they were like coins at the bottom of a bucket. This façade became thinner when he faced her – they hadn’t known each other long enough to have many stories – but he took what he could with gratitude. He would ask her for more stories when he got out, he thought.

Before he could convince himself otherwise, one of his many last breaths rattled in his chest.

And when his eyes opened, there was still darkness.

* * *

“I don’t know what to do,” he admitted to himself, to the darkness, to the nothingness in his head. “Tell me what to do.”

A silhouette was transcribed against the sheet of black, his eyes making something out of nothing, and Joe was too tired to be terrified.

It was his _baba_ , towering over him, but with the softest secret smile in the world—

It was his _mama_ , humming him to sleep with a melody he couldn’t quite recall, her fingers stained with charcoal—

It was his sister, calling him _azizi_ while threatening to smack him if he didn’t come help her right this minute—

_“You could come home.”_

Their faces blurred and re-shaped themselves, over and over, never settling – they were lost to his memory some time ago – but Joe would still know them anywhere. The thought of folding into their arms for eternity was a beautiful one.

But in his mind’s eye, Joe pulled away.

“Not without Nicolò.”

They disappeared again after that, as was their right, and Joe wished his body had the strength to weep, instead of just barely live and die. He tried arranging his mother’s lullaby in his head when he next came back to life. He would fail, as he had a hundred times before, and he would be heartbroken. But at least it bought him some time.

* * *

When distant music reached his ears, he inhaled shallowly and thought that maybe he’d done it. Maybe, his mother had gifted him this memory in his darkest hour.

But... no. Those notes were familiar, but not from an ancient past. Their arrangement— he’d heard it before.

It got closer, bit by bit, and suddenly, a voice, yelling out his name.

No. This was real. This was—

“ _Nile_.”

He could barely get the word out, his throat and lungs coated with dust, so he said it again, and again, and as if he was summoning her, the voice got closer. So did the sound of shifting earth, and his ears rang so loudly from finally hearing any noise after all this time, but he didn’t care how much it hurt. He just kept saying her name, like a mantra, like a prayer, and then—

Light, blinding light, bright enough to burn his eyes away, but he couldn’t be bothered with that when strong arms wrapped around his chest, touching him, making him real again, and a voice that wasn't his own staggered a heavy breath against his cheek: “Oh my God, I found you, I found you.”

With Nile here, the goal of keeping his mind intact was viable again. Though time was still elusive, he felt Nile’s ankle under his hand, solid and firm as she led him forward, and he thought, _Nile_. She had been so scared of this project. And she had come to get him.

Suddenly, he was being pulled straight up for the first time in forever, and his legs felt like a newborn fawn’s as they stumbled through the tunnel, his arm around Nile’s shoulder. He thought she might be shaking, but she didn’t slow down until they reached a hole where the moonlight streamed in like a blessing. His harness was attached to a line, and then—

And then, after what felt like years of nothing: everything. The light of the moon reflecting off his eyes, arms wrapped securely around his shoulders. And more than everything, there was Nicky. Nicky pressing kisses all over his face, Nicky muttering words of love and reassurance in the oldest Arabic he knew, Nicky wetting his face with his tears as their foreheads touched and clasping his neck in a protective embrace.

For the first time, Joe could properly breathe.

There were other activities that he noticed only distantly, but they helped tether him back to reality all the same. Andy and her beautiful eyes and her calloused hands cupping his neck, saying something in Arabic about killing him as Nicky kept crying and hugged Nile to his chest, kissing and thanking her with reverence. After that, the details got fuzzy, and Joe let them – he’d done his job. Nicky and his family would take care of everything now. All he had left to do was breathe.

He must have eaten and drunk something before they got back to the safehouse, but those facts paled in comparison to feeling Nicky’s arms wrapped around him, real and here. Joe had known for millennium that Nicolò was a gift, to himself and to the world, and he never knew it more than when he felt his precious touch once again. Nicolò was the opposite of an abyss: he was everything and he was more.

Where for so long there were none, suddenly, thousands of senses barraged him at once, and he let them all wash over him like a cool wave in midsummer. He was too tired to engage, to recuperate with his own senses as he so loved to, but their presence comforted him just the same. The chatter of voices in a tight car. The gentle stream of water running down his back. Nicky’s hands, massaging each leg and foot, leaving gentle kisses on the way down.

Nicky made to wrap him up where he laid in bed. The shake of Joe’s head was imperceptible, but Nicky saw it all the same. He helped him to his feet, then lay him flat across the couch, resting his head in the familiar curve of his lap. He inhaled deeply: Nicky had dressed him in his favorite sweatshirt, which, of course, was Nicky’s, and so smelled just like him. He could also make out the aroma of hot chocolate and cinnamon, and he knew without looking that there would be two mugs: Nile was the only other one who liked it that way.

She appeared on the arm of the couch by his feet, clearly exhausted, and Joe put in the effort to reach out his hand to her. Nile, incredible, wonderful Nile, took it, and Joe wondered why he’d never noticed before how perfectly her hand fit in his.

“Frank Ocean,” Joe’s throat worked, remembering what she was singing in the caves, and Nile smiled.

Andy sat on the ground next to Nicky, clearly facing the door instead of the television, but she rubbed Joe’s shoulder and told him she had missed him, old pains reflected in her eyes. Joe was glad for more than just his own sake that he got out. But Andy kissed his ear and grinned at him softly, so he let that thought drift away on the wind.

 _“What do you need, my heart,”_ Nicky muttered in the language of Yusuf’s _mama_ and _baba_ , in the words of his ancestors, who still waited for him after a thousand years. _Someday,_ Yusuf promised them, looking up at the love of his life, _but not without him._ He trusted that they would forgive him.

“Nile,” Joe asked, and she looked over, her thumb still rubbing against his knuckles. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

“That’s gonna be difficult,” she said wryly. “You have a thousand years of knowledge on your side.”

“About yourself,” Nicky clarified for him, and Joe was in wonder of how Nicky always _knew_.

“If you want to,” added Joe. They all deserved to rest, especially Nile.

Instead, Nile pondered, sliding off the arm of the couch to the cushion where Joe’s feet were, lifting them and putting them over her lap with ease. Nicky rubbed one side of his scalp, while Andy’s head leaned on the other.

“I could tell you about my first kiss,” Nile said, a bit proudly. “Her name was Natalie.”

Joe drifted off listening to something he'd never heard before, relishing the opportunity - but he knew that the next time he opened his eyes, it wouldn’t be after a dying breath.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: [flightsofwonder](https://flightsofwonder.tumblr.com/)


End file.
